Random Posting

I seem to have this strange aversion to posting something on my own blog when I feel it might out-of-order, not interesting, or just doesn't serve any purpose. Well, unfortunately this leads to me being lazy and not posting about much at all. Perhaps it is a better blog because I try to keep it trim and efficient, but I think a lot of interesting and fun stuff gets left out because of this. Not that every day is a wild adventure filled with mayhem and feats of daring-do, but certainly much more goes on than is posted about here. Anyways, nothing may come of this, especially as Christmas approaches and things tend to be forgotten, but perhaps we'll have a small flurry of posts about flamie-type stuff and things... ya, that's it! Oh, and as a bonus, here's one of my favourite photos from our stay in Vienna this summer.

Mind-bending genius

Changing up the pace a bit from hiking and the Alps, I'm going to post someone from our time in the Netherlands. One of the days, we were granted the use of a car to do with as we pleased for the day. We had some grand plans of going to visit the Delta works and so, but by this point in the journey we were pretty burned out and just wanted a short, relaxing trip. Driving to the Delta works probably would have been amazing, but it was still hours of driving away. So, instead we headed off to "The Hague" (sounds funny to me, as it is Den Haag in Dutch) and visited "Escher in the Palace" AKA the Escher Museum. The building itself was quite beautiful, as is called a palace because during the 18th and 19th centuries it was a palace, and Queen Emma stayed there until 1891.

The museum itself was very thought out, with the progression of rooms following Escher's work through his life chronologically, which also is the same thing as from normal to mind-bending. Much of his earlier work was quite mundane, though perhaps showing bits and pieces of what would show up in his later works.

By the end, it was just rooms filled with tessellations, impossible perspectives, and all of the other work that Escher is so well known for.

I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience and gained a new appreciation for Escher's genius and unique his mind was.

Austria Part 3: Hohes Brett

This was probably our most difficult hike. Fortunately, we had a few hikes under our belt by this time, but we still weren't close to our peak (hah!) fitness. It started out with a wonderful cable car ride, which gets you most of the way there. Unfortunately, in this case, "most of the way there" is most of the way up the wrong mountain. So, we had to hike partially down the side of one mountain before we could start up the one we were actually interested in. You can see this a bit in the first two photos... the path seen below is the one we had to follow to get to the mountain on the left. Notice the colours of the dots on the sign, they indicate the difficulty of the hike...black is as hard as it gets before you need to have mountain climbing gear and we were heading to the Hohes Brett.

Here is a shot back that Rowan took where we were fairly far up our target mountain. What you see in the foreground is what most of the path looked like at this point; rubble, gravel, and rock debris. Definitely not very nice for hiking. In the distance, if you follow the trail, you can see to Bahnhof, that is, the top of the cable car lift.

We never made it up to our target altitude, but it wasn't for lack of trying, it was because we ran out of water and were starting to feel a little "off". Probably the combination of exertion, heat, and altitude. So, we played it safe and headed back at around 2200m. The lift was at 1700m, but there as I mentioned, you have to cross the "valley" first, maybe 100m or 200m below the lift.

All-in-all it was an exhausting hike and we never reached our final destination, but it was still rewarding to have gotten so far as out-of-shape North Americans. The part that truly crushed our spirits was when we were at the point where we turned back, an elderly couple (I'm guessing between 60-70 years old) came descending from some point above us. Oh well, in case I haven't made this clear yet, I now firmly believe that Austrians are part-mountain goat and are born to climb things that no other humans can climb, and make it look easy. My hat goes off to them.

I have no will of my own....

OH NO!!! Jason has been attacked by a brain slug and now he has no will of his own! Oh well, he's doing all the housework and making all the meals so this might not be such a bad thing...

New hoodie... I knit it!

Well, this might not be as exciting as new photos from Austria, but I love it! I've been working on this sweater on-and-off for maybe 3 months now (much more off than on... I'm actually a decently fast knitter now) and just finished it. I knew it was going to be fantastic, but when I put it on I loved it right away. There's just something about the feel of a well fitted, hand-knit creation that is very comforting. Not the greatest picture, I'll try to get some more when Rowan returns (she's off at a conference in Portland at the moment, for those that didn't know).

Austria Part 2: Gosaukamm

This hike was did not occur chronologically next after Steinplatte, but it is the one that I feel like writing/posting about next. One of the memorable features of this hike was that it showed us how adept (read CRAZY!) Austrians really are when it comes to mountain hiking. As with most of the popular hiking/skiing mountains in Austria, a lift takes you 3/4 of the way up and then you start hiking from there. After a very short walk of maybe 5 minutes, we came across a nice little restaurant/bar.We never ended up stopping there, but it looked like a fun way to either start a day's hike or to end one. The hiking started out easy enough, a little steep, but nothing unexpected for a mountain hike and it was a beautiful day!

Unfortunately, there are no good photos of the trail we eventually took, but the above photo shows one of the nicest sections. The next shot also shows the same section of the trail (bottom left side of the photo), just from above where we ended up.

See, to get where we wanted to be, we needed to go a lot more up. It was a smaller side-trail that ended up being more of a scramble on all fours up slippery rocks. I say slippery rocks because the trail is so well worn that the rocks have been worn down to a point where they give very little traction and are coated in an interesting mix of dirt, shoe rubber, and hand grease. This was one of our earlier hikes, so we didn't yet have our confidence up yet and this hike was quite daunting and tiring. We ended up stopping for lunch, where I took the above photo as well as the following one.

While we were stopped for lunch was a very steep, very rocky place with no immediately obvious way to continue up, so we ended up turning back from there. It was at that time, that a young family, who was also heading down, just from a much higher point, came walking down the mountain side, almost never using their hands, and passed us. If memory serves, there was dad with a baby on his back, mom, and 2 young boys (aged somewhere between 7 and 10). I was simply floored by their confidence and ability to hike so quickly on what seemed to be a rather treacherous path, particularly with such young kids. Anyways, we made our slow way back down, were greeted by a fabulous view of a glacier on one of the neighbouring mountains.

Austria Part 1: Steinplatte

One of the mountains we hiked on in Austria was the Steinplatte. This was actually the first place we went to, and thankfully we were following our extremely helpful guides. I say thankfully, because about 20 minutes away, the skies opened up and a heavy downpour was unleashed upon us. It was heavy enough, that we couldn't see more than about 10 meters infront of us, but the glow of their tail lights were enough to follow up the narrow, windy mountain road up to top where our destination for the night was. This was my first view ever from the Alps, its still cloudy from the rain, but I knew we were in for the treat when it finally cleared. But I didn't know it would be this good. The next morning the skies cleared and we could finally see the view. We returned to the Steinplatte twice more during our time in Austria, and the rest of these photos are a selection of the HUNDREDS of photos I have from that. If there is interest, I'll post a larger selection of the photos to my Picasa web album. The next photo does need a little explaining though. As we made our way up the road, we stopped at a number of locations to look at the rocks. During one of these stops, a nearby cow took great interest in our rental car. Apparently they like shiny things, and as such are particularly drawn to the side view mirrors. It didn't stop there though, after folding in the side view mirror with all of its nuzzling, the cow start to lick any available surface on the car. It was very brave (dumb?), and didn't even move when I walks up to it, got in the car, and finally drove off.